Customer-Centered Business: 10 Keys to Organic Growth

What is your business centered on? Investors, competition, innovation, or customers? The rule of the game is to follow the money. Sure, it comes from all these motives, but it springs from customers buying your offerings.

When customers quit buying, all the rest becomes irrelevant. Centering your business on customers is therefore the logical choice.

Growth is the name of the game in business. It’s the measure of health. Growth can be inorganic via acquisitions or organic via demand. Organic growth means an upward trajectory set in motion without ongoing stimuli.

How can both profit and revenue grow organically? By getting things right the first time and consistently. The definition of “right” is determined by customers, the source of organic demand.

The term “customer-centered” may be more pure and powerful rather than customer-centric or customer-driven. “Driven” is overused. It seems everyone wants their pet topic to be the driver for the company: market-driven, project-driven, revenue-driven, design-driven, etc. “Centric” is misunderstood. It seems some managers view customer-centricity as kowtowing to customers’ every whim, such as making everything free. In reality, customers want you to be successful so you can make them successful on an ongoing basis. At least your target customers do!

Customer-centered means that your management decisions and actions in all facets of your business are centered on customers’ well-being as the path to your well-being.

“Well-being” is a balance of generosity and discipline. The well-being of your body requires sufficient rest balanced with exercise and a moderate diet. The well-being of a child requires a balance of recreation, learning, and structure. When customers’ well-being is great they make fewer demands on your company and they are eager to engage in mutual value creation.

Customer well-being requires a balance between the benefits they receive from your company and the collective costs they incur: money, time, effort and stress.

The idea of customer-centered business may feel foreign: something you’ve never experienced. It may be mysterious: you’re unsure of how to shift from investor-centered, competition-centered, or innovation-centered management. Or you may claim to be customer-centered already: double-check your assumptions by asking customers whether you’re really customer-centered.

This article is the first of a 12-part series to examine 10 keys to customer-centered business for sustainable organic growth. Here’s a preview of these 10 keys to success:

Centering your business on customers means nothing is done in a vacuum: customers’ realities are the context for everything everyone does. Customer-centered business means your rituals and decision-making honor customers’ realities and needs as the pathway to meeting the needs of every stakeholder: employees, investors, partners, community, etc. This puts the horse before the cart. Feed the hand that feeds you and you will be fed.

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